iPad program completes first year

ASHBURNHAM -- With the school year ending Wednesday, the Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School District is witnessing the sunset of the first year of its elementary-school iPad program, and technology coordinator Eric DeHays said so far the results look good.

"We feel it's been effective, but we have nothing solid to base that on yet," said DeHays.

The school district has formed an iPad Pilot Project Evaluation Committee, and the results are expected to be released in the fall.

In October the school purchased 83 of the iPad 2 model at a cost of $22,000 over three years through an education vendor. DeHays said they were originally hoping to have one iPad for each first-grader at Meetinghouse Elementary School and Westminster Elementary School, but budget requirements brought the ratio down to nearly two students for each of the tablet computers.

Students do not share the iPads during a lesson, but instead entire classrooms take turns with the devices.

One classroom at Meetinghouse Elementary School has one iPad for each student while the other six in the school district have to rotate between usage. The teacher of the one-for-one classroom, Cindy Cringan, is the only teacher appointed to the 12-member evaluation committee, which also includes DeHays and Superintendent of Schools Ralph Hicks.

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Hicks said new technologies can bring the teachers new ways to reach students, but it's the school district's responsibility to determine which technologies work and which don't.

"We need to embrace it slowly," said Hicks. "We need to evaluate it carefully to make sure it doesn't hamper the educational process."

Cringan declined to comment for this story.

DeHays said the iPads have replaced desktop computers in Cringan's class, and so far the teachers use them to supplement existing lesson plans.

"It's really to reinforce what's already being taught in the curriculum," said DeHays. "It's another way to reach the kids."

For example, students who have a math assignment can use the iPads to add or subtract items on the screen.

Dehays said the mechanism to evaluate the project is still being hammered out, but the effectiveness of Cringan's classroom with its one-to-one ratio needs to be compared with the classrooms that share the devices.

DeHays said he sees a lot of potential with iPads in the classroom. He said students will benefit from keeping up on advances in computer interfaces, and the tablet models are cheaper for the school to purchase than traditional computers.

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